Underrecognized Hinduphobia: What We Can Learn from the Texas City Council Hindu-Mocking Episode

The article examines a recent incident at a Plano, Texas City Council meeting where a right-wing podcaster, dressed in a kurta and tilak, delivered a racist rant using a mock-Indian accent and dehumanizing tropes involving cows and waste. Author Vamsee Juluri argues that the failure of council officials to interrupt this performance highlights a broader “normalization of anti-Hindu racism” that is often dismissed or mislabeled as generic “anti-South Asian” hate by scholars and activists. The piece traces the history of these “disgust-inducing” tropes—relating to diet, hygiene, and disease—from British colonial-era propaganda and Katherine Mayo’s Mother India to modern media depictions like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Slumdog Millionaire. Juluri contends that Hinduphobia is a distinct and systemic form of bigotry that is frequently denied recognition because of the perceived socio-economic success of Hindu Americans, and he calls for it to be acknowledged as a reprehensible subset of racism that transcends political and geographic boundaries.